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Hermes T. Haight
Hermes T. Haight is one of the main villains of the 2004 horror videogame The Suffering. A former executioner at Abbott State Penitentiary on Carnate Island, Hermes was notorious for his long and obsessive reign over the gas chamber, his favourite means of execution. Though he committed suicide several years before the events of the game, he returns in the present as a ghost of toxic gas, determined to once again indulge himself in killing. However, he also regards protagonist Torque with considerable interest, considering him a possible rival for the role of Abbott's most prolific murderer - and also a welcome successor. Of the three ghosts of the island, he is easily the most villainous, for whereas Horace Gauge is enslaved by the electric chair and Dr Killjoy genuinely wants to help others in spite of his murderous tendencies, Hermes is an unapologetic psychopath with a twisted desire to bring out the killer in Torque. He was voiced by John Patrick Lowrie. Appearance No photographic records of Hermes prior to his death can be found at any point in the game, so it remains to be seen just how accurately his ghostly form captures his true appearance. In any event, his ghost is little more than a transparent wraith in the shape of a tall, thin human figure, comprised entirely of sickly green gas; completely bald, sunken-eyed and gaunt-featured, he is dressed only in a pair of uniform pants and shoes - both of which only become noticeable in the event that he manifests a body below his waist. Easily the least human of all the ghosts on the island, he appears cadaverous to the point of almost appearing decayed, an impression only worsened by his transparent form and green coloration. Though he primarily manifests as a human, he can take the form of billowing clouds of gas long before manifesting his humanoid shape, travelling through gratings and pipes in this fashion; he can even appear as diffused gas in the air. Indeed, this also makes Hermes the stealthiest of all the supernatural threats on the island next to the Nooseman, for he can make himself effectively invisible in certain areas until he chooses to strike: in one guard tower, Torque can end up stumbling into a fatal cloud of Hermes' substance and not even know it until the ghost himself speaks and the gas begins to coalesce. Hermes speaks in a low-pitched monotone, enunciating slowly, drawing out certain words and rarely speaking at any volume above a languid whisper. In a further nod to his favorite means of execution and his chosen means of suicide, he punctuates his speech with long, slow breaths, as if he is savoring the taste of his own toxic gas. Personality Cold, unfeeling, lacking even the most basic form of empathy, and obsessively dedicated to eliminating human life wherever he finds it, Hermes T Haight is a consummate executioner. Throughout the game, he kills without hesitation, smothering his victims in his gas the moment they arrive within reach; early on, should Torque refuse to kill a guard trapped in the gas chamber, Hermes will simply activate the chamber himself and look on with a smirk as the unfortunate corrections officer suffocates to death. He freely admits that he enjoys killing, and has so ever since he took the post of executioner - initially due to the sense of accomplishment he gained from being congratulated on "a job well done," but later due to the sheer pleasure of the act and the sense of power he held over his victims. He also demonstrates a profound sadistic streak, not only in tauntingly encouraging his victims to "breath deep" as they die, but also in his very appearance: as he notes during the boss battle, the gas used for executions was clear and odorless, effectively invisible to the condemned; Hermes, however, felt it would be better if they could actually see their death approaching. So, as a ghost, the gas that composes his spectral body is deep green in colour - all so his targets could experience the fear and desperation of watching the poison inching steadily closer. As he himself remarks, his victims can only hold their breath for so long, and Hermes takes particular delight in watching them try to hang on. Entirely without regret or remorse, Hermes feels nothing for his victims other than withering contempt at best: if Jimmy is still alive by the time Torque reaches the lighthouse, Hermes will envelop him in gas and watch him die in agony, before dismissing him as uninteresting compared to Torque. During the boss battle that follows, he muses on his past victims by remarking that people on death row are neither smart, successful or happy, and claims that he was merely "putting them out of their pathetic misery - thinning the herd." He also admits that, as an executioner, he wasn't interested in the crimes that the condemned had committed and barely knew who they were; the only important thing about them was that he was allowed to kill them. He even remarks with disappointment on the fact that he "never got to snuff a woman," implying that, had his obsession with the gas chamber not gotten the best of him, he may have actively sought out victims beyond Carnate. The only individual spared immediate death at his hands is Torque, and then only because he wants to test his mettle as a killer. However, in keeping with his leanings toward Social Darwinism, he has no interest in manipulating him directly or even keeping his rival alive: should Torque stumble into a pocket of Hermes' gas by mistake, the executioner will simply let him succumb to its effects. As such, he is most satisfied when Torque surrenders to corruption with the bare minimum of prompting: should players take the good morality path, Hermes will express disappointment, encouraging him to "try harder"; similarly, if Torque resists transforming into his rage form for the first time, Hermes even reacts with a rare moment of anger in shouting "Come on, you bastard, do it! ''You think you're better than us?!" On the other hand, during evil morality playthroughs, Hermes will react with delight at the growing death toll, musing upon how much he loves to watch the convicted killer at work, and remarking with admiration that Torque was "twice the killer I thought you to be." He even reacts with near-orgasmic delight at being destroyed in the lighthouse furnace, enraptured at finally bringing out the killer in Torque. Ultimately, one of Hermes' most defining characteristics is his obsession with death and the gas chamber: having grown fixated on both ever since he started work as an executioner, his desire to understand the former and enjoy the latter drove him to increasingly twisted acts in his attempts to indulge his obsessions - even if it meant killing himself. As a ghost, he regards the gas with rapturous exaltation for its purity, observing how it has become an expression of life itself for its green color: "first it giveth, then it taketh away." History In Life Several years prior to the events of the game, Hermes T Haight worked as a correction officer at Abbott State Penitentiary on Carnate Island. A devoted worker, he later claimed that while others found work so that they could live, he lived for his work, and nowhere was this more true of his career at Abbott, where his dedication to his job eventually won him the rank of captain. As the prison was the Maryland Board of Corrections' primary venue of choice for executions in the state, Hermes was one of many applicants for the role of executions, and though countless "eager sadists" applied for the job, he was the only one competent and efficient enough to earn it. It's not known how much of his psychopathy was due to his own nature and how much of it was due to the corrupting nature of Carnate Island; whatever the case, his new role soon grew to define him. Despite his cold professionalism, Hermes soon found himself enjoying the executions: initially this was due to the praise he received for his effectiveness, but soon it became a matter of the power he held over the condemned inmates at "the most important moment of their lives"; eventually, Hermes' enjoyment turned to near-sexual gratification in the taking of life. This pleasure inspired him to indulge himself in the widest variety of methods possible, for over his tenure as executioner, he used everything from the hangman's noose to the electric chair; worryingly enough, it's not known how many of these executions were legally sanctioned, for though he later claimed to have executed inmates by rifle, firing squads on Carnate had been discontinued in the aftermath of World War II. What is known is that Hermes' favorite means of dispatch was the gas chamber. Admiring it for the "purity" he saw in its method, he took great delight in watching inmates struggle to hold their breath as the deadly poisons flooded the chamber. Indeed, the only thing that spoiled his viewing pleasure was the simple fact that the gas itself was completely imperceptible to the condemned until the condemned actually started inhaling it, and he believed that it would be more entertaining if the mixture was colored so that the victim could see their death creeping closer. Over the course of his tenure as executioner, Hermes become one of the most infamous figures in the history of the island, both for his disturbing efficiency and for his increasingly morbid habits. Along with his obsession with the gas and growing addiction to killing, he also developed a curious attraction to darkness, preferring to sit in the shadows of the gas chamber's control room, where he felt empowered by the sense of total anonymity. His notoriety only escalated as the years went by, particularly following the execution of inmate Horace Gauge, which was said to be so horrific that the electric chair supposedly still reeks of charred flesh. It's not known if Hermes faced any penalty for the debacle or even what caused it in the first place; however, this was soon an entirely academic matter, for by then the executioner had a new obsession to brood over. Towards the end of his time at Carnate, the executioner developed a disturbing fixation upon the nature of death: already taking perverse delight in the dying agonies of his victims, he started to wonder if they experienced something more than he could see from the control room, something too subtle to be observed with the naked eye. By that time, his addiction to killing no longer thrilled quite the way it had before, and Hermes had to explore new vistas of sensation - for "it was never enough" - so he decided to investigate deeper in the hopes of finding a new high to enjoy. He began by eavesdropping on the final phone conversations of death row inmates, listening to the condemned men assuring their families and friends that everything would be okay; however, Hermes only grew more frustrated, for it seemed as though his future victims somehow knew more than him, even though they all showed the same fear and agony at the moment of their execution. Studying the bodies of the dead gave him no joy: even Horace's charred remains provided little illumination. In the end, his only recourse was to "taste the gas" himself, committing suicide via the gas chamber which he'd loved so much. With no family to collect his body, the executioner's mortal remains were interred at the prison cemetery alongside the bodies of many of his past victims, including Horace Gauge; perhaps hoping to wallpaper over the dead captain's more disturbing tendencies, prison officials gave Hermes a grander tombstone with it's own fenced-off enclosure, and even renamed the necropolis in his honor. Nonetheless, the Captain Hermes T Haight Cemetery was one of the most unwelcoming places in the entire prison, not only because nobody wanted to face the reality of dying on the island, but also because of the reputation its most famous tenant had acquired: Hermes Haight had well and truly cemented his place in Carnate's dark history, remaining a terrifying fixture in the ghost stories told by guards and inmates alike long after Abbott abandoned the gas chamber. Events Of The Game It's not known how active the the supernatural inhabitants of Carnate were prior to the events of The Suffering, but it's believed that they had some semblance of existence: Hermes later claims that "I didn't die - not exactly," implying that he retained consciousness after death, enough to learn more about the protagonist, for he later asserts that he read about Torque's life even though Hermes would have been long dead by the time the convicted killer's files got anywhere near Abbott. In any event, shortly after Torque arrives on the Island, the Cataclysm occurs, unleashing the Malefactors upon the prison and apparently giving several of Carnate's most infamous figures a ghostly new existence - including Hermes. Investigating the cemetery later in "Darkest Night, Eternal Blight" reveals that the executioner's coffin has burst out of his grave, and holes have been punched through the lid, allowing an ominous green light to shine through. Of the three primary ghosts, Hermes is the second introduced, immediately following Horace: while exploring the Death House, Torque stumbles upon a corrections officer that's been knocked unconscious and left in the long-neglected gas chamber; it's not known how he came to be here, considering that the door was welded shut when the chamber was officially decomissioned during the 1980s and the chamber itself was little more than a museum exhibit. One way or another, supernatural forces have trapped the unfortunate guard inside, and players are given a choice as to whether he should turn on the gas or leave it be: if Torque simply tries to escape through the chamber room, Hermes appears and activates the chamber, condemning the guard inside to an extremely painful death, before opening the door and flooding the room outside with toxic gas; if Torque does ''kill the guard, Hermes cheekily opens the chamber as soon as he arrives in the room outside, leaving him once again trapped in the face of the expanding gas cloud - only saved at the last minute by a Slayer bursting through the observation window. Soon after, Hermes reappears alongside Dr Killjoy and Horace in "Descending." In the basement boiler room, the three ghosts study Torque at length, encouraging him to consciously utilize his rage form for the first time: however, where Killjoy encourages him to "let it all out" and Horace sadly comments on the pointlessness of resisting, Hermes goes so far as to deliberately provoke Torque, remarking that his claim of blacking out during his wife's death sounds like a convenient excuse and mockingly reassuring him that he'll "fit right in" on Carnate. Eventually, with Slayers attacking him from all angles and the ghosts brow-beating him from above, Torque successfully transforms. With Killjoy declaring the session a successful one, the ghosts then vanish - for now. Hermes next appears in "No More Prisons," where he continues his killing spree by ambushing two escaping inmates and smothering them in his gas; during the same level, the ghostly executioner insists that Torque show him "that thing you do," claiming to love the sight of him committing acts of violence. However, during a later conversation on tower B2, he only responds favorably if players have chosen the negative karma path, in which he appreciatively remarks that he's clearly up against strong competition: in the neutral karma playthrough, he notes that Torque seems indecisive, and in the good karma storyline, Hermes reacts with clear disappointment. Following the final confrontation with Horace, Torque once again meets Hermes at the gas chamber, where he promises that they will meet again for their own boss fight later. In the meantime, he continues murdering inmates, at one point deliberately frightening a car full of escapees off the road and over a cliff. Eventually, while attempting to activate the beacon and guide a rescue craft to Carnate, Hermes reappears in the basement of the lighthouse to test Torque's mettle one last time - this time clearly intending to kill the escaping convict if he can't measure up. For good measure, if Jimmy is travelling alongside Torque, the executioner will kill him before the fight begins. Over the course of the boss battle that follows, Torque must close all the vents that Hermes can emerge from, preventing the basement from flooding with gas and restricting the ghost's movements to between two points; then, while avoiding lethal blasts of poison, he must open a gas jet to force Hermes' body into the furnace, apparently destroying him - Hermes reacting with open arousal. However, much like Killjoy and Horace, Hermes is able to return from this second death towards the very end of the game, where he appears at a gap in the road: though he commends Torque on his gifts as a killer, he insists that he still doesn't know anything and orders him to proceed to the dock and learn the truth. Then, after sending an out-control bus into the gap to bridge the road, he vanishes - this time for good. It is unknown what happened to Hermes after this: with Carnate Island still being a disaster area during ''Ties That Bind, it is possible that he merely continues his killing spree. 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